How Long Does It Take to Receive a Bill From National Grid After They Read a Meter?
This article originally appeared in Universe Today in July, 2012, but it'southward been updated with a related video.
The planet Mars is 1 of the brightest objects in the night sky, easily visible with the unaided eye as a vivid red star. Every 2 years or so, Mars and Earth attain their closest point, called "opposition", when Mars can be as close as 55,000,000 km from Earth. And every two years, infinite agencies take advantage of this orbital alignment to transport spacecraft to the Red Planet. How long does it take to get to Mars?
The total journeying time from Earth to Mars takes between 150-300 days depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of Earth and Mars, and the length of the journeying the spacecraft takes to achieve its target. Information technology actually just depends on how much fuel you're willing to burn to go there. More than fuel, shorter travel time.
History of Going to Mars:
The first spacecraft ever to brand the journeying from Earth to Mars was NASA's Mariner four, which launched on November 28, 1964 and arrived at Mars July 14, 1965, successfully taking a series of 21 photographs. Mariner 4's total flight time was 228 days.
The side by side successful mission to Mars was Mariner 6, which blasted off on February 25, 1969 and reached the planet on July 31, 1969; a flight time of only 156 days. The successful Mariner 7 only required 131 days to brand the journeying.
Mariner 9, the first spacecraft to successfully go into orbit around Mars launched on May thirty, 1971, and arrived November thirteen, 1971 for a duration of 167 days. This is the same pattern that has held upwardly for more nearly 50 years of Mars exploration: approximately 150-300 days.
Here are some more than examples:
- Viking 1 (1976) – 335 days
- Viking two (1976) – 360 days
- Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006) – 210 days
- Phoenix Lander (2008) – 295 days
- Curiosity Lander (2012) – 253 days
Why Does it Have So Long?:
When you consider the fact that Mars is only 55 million km away, and the spacecraft are travelling in excess of xx,000 km/hour, you would expect the spacecraft to brand the journeying in about 115 days, but it takes much longer. This is because both Globe and Mars are orbiting around the Sun. You tin't indicate directly at Mars and outset firing your rockets, considering by the time you got there, Mars would accept already moved. Instead, spacecraft launched from Earth need to exist pointed at where Mars is going to be.
The other constraint is fuel. Once more, if you lot had an unlimited corporeality of fuel, you'd signal your spacecraft at Mars, fire your rockets to the halfway point of the journey, then turn around and decelerate for the last one-half of the journeying. You could cutting your travel fourth dimension down to a fraction of the current rate – only you lot would need an impossible amount of fuel.
How to Get to Mars with the Least Amount of Fuel:
The primary business of engineers is how to get a spacecraft to Mars, on the to the lowest degree amount of fuel. Robots don't actually care about the hostile environment of infinite, and then it makes sense to decrease the launch costs of the rocket as much every bit possible.
NASA engineers use a method of travel called a Hohmann Transfer Orbit – or a Minimum Energy Transfer Orbit – to send a spacecraft from Earth to Mars with the least amount of fuel possible. The technique was first proposed by Walter Hohmann who published the outset description of the maneuver in 1925.
Instead of pointing your rocket directly at Mars, y'all boost the orbit of your spacecraft so that it's post-obit a larger orbit around the Sunday than the Earth. Somewhen that orbit will intersect the orbit of Mars – at the exact moment that Mars is at that place also.
If yous need to launch with less fuel, you but take longer to raise your orbit, and increase the journey to Mars.
Other Ideas to Subtract the Travel Time to Mars:
Although it requires some patience to wait for a spacecraft to travel 250 days to accomplish Mars, we might want a completely different propulsion method if we're sending humans. Space is a hostile identify, and the radiations of interplanetary space might pose a longterm health risk to man astronauts. The background cosmic rays inflict a constant barrage of cancer-inducing radiations, but there'south a bigger risk of massive solar storms, which could impale unprotected astronauts in a few hours. If you can subtract the travel time, y'all reduce the amount of time astronauts are getting pelted with radiation, and minimize the amount of supplies they need to carry for a return journey.
Go Nuclear:
Ane idea is nuclear rockets, which heat up a working fluid – similar hydrogen – to intense temperatures in a nuclear reactor, and then blast it out a rocket nozzle at high velocities to create thrust. Considering nuclear fuels are far more than energy dense than chemical rockets, you could get a higher thrust velocity with less fuel. It's proposed that a nuclear rocket could subtract the travel fourth dimension down to about 7 months
Get Magnetic:
Another proposal is a technology called the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (or VASIMR). This is an electromagnetic thruster which uses radio waves to ionize and heat a propellant. This creates an ionized gas chosen plasma which can be magnetically thrust out the back of the spacecraft at high velocities. Former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz is pioneering the evolution of this technology, and a image is expected to be installed on the International Space Station to help it maintain its altitude above Earth. In a mission to Mars, a VASIMR rocket could reduce the travel fourth dimension down to v months.
Become Antimatter:
Perhaps i of the nearly extreme proposals would be to utilize an antimatter rocket. Created in particle accelerators, antimatter is the most dense fuel you could perhaps use. When atoms of matter meet atoms of antimatter, they transform into pure free energy, as predicted by Albert Einstein'southward famous equation: East = mctwo. Just 10 milligrams of antimatter would be needed to propel a human being mission to Mars in only 45 days. Simply and so, producing fifty-fifty that minuscule corporeality of antimatter would cost most $250 1000000.
Future Missions to Mars:
Fifty-fifty though some incredible technologies take been proposed to shorten the travel fourth dimension to Mars, engineers will be using the tried and truthful methods of following minimum energy transfer orbits using chemical rockets. NASA's MAVEN mission will launch in 2013 using this technique, likewise ESA'south ExoMars missions. It might be a few decades before other methods become common techniques.
Research farther:
Information about Interplanetary Orbits – NASA
vii Minutes of Terror – The Challenge of Landing at Mars
NASA Proposal for a nuclear rocket engine
Hohmann Transfer Orbits – Iowa State University
Minimum Transfers and Interplanetary Orbits
New and Improved Antimatter Space Transport for Mars Missions – NASA
Astronomy Cast Episode 84: Getting Effectually the Solar Organization
Related Stories from Universe Today:
Travel to Mars in Merely 39 Days
A One Way, One Person Mission to Mars
Could a Human Mission to Mars exist Funded Commercially?
How Will MSL Navigate to Mars? Very Carefully
A Cheap Solution to Getting to Mars?
Why have so many missions to Mars failed?
This commodity originally appeared in Universe Today in July, 2012, but it's been updated with a related video.
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